at different sections of the posts. Some of the ropes were tied to the opposite pole. Some were attached to rings in the ground, and others just flapped loose in the wind.
I licked my lips and whispered, “Are you sure?”
Fortunately, his tiger hearing was extremely good. He bent over close to my ear and shouted over the wind, “It could be a monument or a memorial created by nomads, but there’s just something different about this. I want to check it out.”
I nodded weakly, and he set me down in the sleeping bag near one of the poles. He’d taken to carrying me in the sleeping bag to keep me warmer. I slipped into a deep sleep. When he woke me, I wasn’t sure if it had been hours or seconds.
“This is the right place, Kelsey. I found a handprint. Now, should we go through it or turn back? I feel we should turn back and return later.”
I reached a gloved hand out and touched his chest. I whispered, feeling the wind gobble up my words and tear them away just as they passed my lips. Fortunately, he heard them. I said, “No . . . we won’t be able . . . find it . . . again . . . too hard. Ocean Teacher said . . . prove our . . . f . . . faith. It’s . . . a test. We . . . must . . . tr . . . try.”
“But, Kells—”
“Take me . . . the . . . handprint.”
He looked at me with indecision battling in his eyes. Gently, he stretched out his gloved hand and brushed the snowflakes from my cheek.
I caught his hand in mine. “Have faith,” I whispered into the wind.
He sighed deeply, then slid his arms under me and carried me to the wooden post. “Here it is. On the left of the pole, under the blue fabric.”
I saw it and tried to get my glove off. Kishan stood me up, supporting all my weight on one arm. He pulled off my glove with the other hand and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he guided my hand into the cold depression carved into the bark of the wooden marker. Now that I was closer, I could see intricate carvings all over the wood that had been partially covered by the snow. If I’d felt better, I would have loved to examine them, but I couldn’t even stay upright without Kishan.
I kept my hand pressed against the wood but nothing happened. I tried to summon the fire in my belly, the spark that made my hand glow, but I felt deadened.
“Kishan . . . I . . . c . . . can’t. I’m too . . . c . . . cold.” I felt like crying.
He took off his gloves, unzipped his jacket, tore his shirt underneath, and put my frozen hand against his bare chest, covering the back of it with his own warm hand. His chest was hot. He pressed his warm cheek against my cold one and rubbed the back of my hand with his palm for a few minutes. He spoke, but I didn’t understand his words. He shifted to protect me from the wind, and I almost fell asleep as he held me in the warm cocoon he’d created. Finally, he pulled back a little and said, “There, that’s better. Now, try again.”
He helped me angle my hand. I felt a small spark of tingly warmth and urged it to build. The power was slow and lethargic, but it did build until the handprint glowed. The pole shook and began to glow too. Something happened to my eyes. A green sheen fell across my vision like I’d put on a pair of green-tinted sunglasses. It made the glow from my hand look bright orange, and the orange traveled from one pole across the fabric tail to the other pole.
The ground shook, and we were enveloped in a bubble of warmth. Too weak to continue, my hand slipped out, and I fell back against Kishan, who scooped me up in his arms again. A little bubble of static formed between the two poles and grew larger. Colors shifted inside the bubble, which were too vague and fuzzy to make out at first, but they grew bigger and started to come into focus. I heard a boom, and the picture snapped into place.